Shrimp Day! (The Unification of PvP and PvE)

Actually, that’s what it says under the cap on my Sobe:Power… so… I digress.

But honestly, with the most recent change on the PTR, making epic Hyjal/BT gems available for 15 badges each, is there any question NOW that Blizzard is trying to break the barrier between PvP and PvE… while inadvertently merging the two? Is this a bad thing? Absolutely. In my opinion, the gear obtained through each of the section’s means should be separate. Because, let’s face it… WoW has broken down into two factions: The Arena Specialists, and the Raiding Masters.

Players have been complaining about this for a while now, even before all these changes were being made on the PTR. I would imagine it started around the same time when arena gear became available using BG points, dubbing them “welfare epics”. But honestly, this argument can only be 1-way, as the PvP’ers were seeing more and more geared out PvE’ers muscle into their territory. It can’t work both ways. If a PvE’er complains about someone raiding in PvP gear but with the same effectiveness, someone needs to be kicked in the face… hard. It’s a one way street. You can succeed to a point in flat out PvE gear and spec in the arenas and BGs***, but the reverse can never happen due to resilience being a useless stat in instances, and a complete waste of iLvl.

*** Case in point – my Season 2 3v3 team housed a Disc/Holy Priest, Combat/Assassination Rogue (me), and a Feral Druid. The Priest was 50/50 PvE/PvP gear, but myself and the Druid were full PvE spec and gear. Our first target rarely survived our initial burst and we climbed up to 2100 by season’s end, only playing around 10-15 games per week. ***

From all the screenshots on the WoW news sites, it looks like more and more things are being put in place to give PvE’ers the opportunity to purchase PvP gear through PvE means. Now granted, that stuff isn’t the greatest PvP gear you can get, but some of the pieces… it actually is. Take into account the PvP cloak you could buy with badges at the beginning of Season 3. That’s arguably the best PvP cloak you can obtain. Hell, with some classes, some of the earlier arena gear is somewhat better than the later stuff. But again, I digress. And now with the badge-to-gem option upcoming in 2.4, PvP’ers can boost their gear’s strength with items from a raiding instance they have never stepped foot in. Now, I know it’s not a huge upgrade, but it’s the beginning of what could be the worst mistake Blizzard could make if they eventually combine the two aspects of the game.

Ultimately, skill will always beat gear, but gear will also increase the margin of error allowed and still be successful in any fight. I just hope Blizzard knows where they are going with this in the long run. I would hate for it to turn into a system where PvP’ers could purchase PvE gear using arena points, or worse… BG points. That would bring the merger to a definite close, and in turn, make both sides equally unhappy… and make crappy players look like they know what they are doing.

My head hurts now. =/